Who's Fastest On That Central Park Loop?

The Men's Marathon Trials course being used on Nov. 3 has never been run before, so we can't judge times from there. Or from the standard ING NYC Marathon Course, which is completely different from the Trials loops in Central Park.

However, the basic-and-constantly-undulating Central Park loop has been used, more or less, for two elite men's races in recent years: the USATF National Championships 8K, and the Healthy Kidney 10K. We tried to find the best times for those courses, and then we merged them by "adjusting" the 10K clockings to equivalent 8Ks. This isn't a perfect system, and we didn't end up in journalism because of our great grades in Trig. But here's what we got, including only runners expected in New York on Nov. 3. (The American record for 8K on the roads is the 22:04 that Alberto Salazar ran on a flat course in 1981.)